I dont usually do stocks, just let my 401k work for me, but with everything bottoming out i put 2k in 1 stock and had a 25% return today, and if it gets back to where it was, i could see my 2k buying me a new premium pin. We will see though, everything is shakey, but if it bottoms again, i may buy more!

My guess is 29k, but it won't be this year.

I'm not the one to ask. I'm a realist bordering on pessimist. That being said, I'm horrible at predicting the market.

Definitely 17k.

150+ Boston hospital workers now have the virus.

I think investingdad has the best approach in this thread. Go read some of his posts. Sounds like a boglehead. I wish I'd followed that strategy.

During this financial whirlwind I have continued to max out my biweekly retirement contributions into the S&P based fund my 401k/tsp offers. Today I re-started putting in optional catch-up contributions (for age 50+) at a rate that will max out ($6500/yr) after 11 bi-weeks (to dollar cost average that sort of).

The money I had been putting in the 401k/tsp over the last 23 years was pulled out back in August and remains in a low percentage accrual safety (G Fund). I plan to consider getting some of that money back into the market between DOW 17000 and 11000 (if it gets back in that range) in chunks around 10% at a time.

What if it doesn't? What if Monday was the low? Will you get back in at some point? Typically there would be a retest of Monday's low in a few months, but you never know.

my office just sent out "we're extending WFH at least until the 17th"

.. but .. but.. the 17th is after easter!

I am ok with not getting back in, but will at least partially at some point even if it is in the 20 to 30 thousand range.

As mentioned earlier, I am not playing. Just paper trading and observing. The only thing I have done right was to make a call that off BA did not hold $255 then it would most likely see $120. I was not expecting that to happen in now week !

I'm in agreement with you. I do not subscribe to any chart service and the chart I have been using is the free version. I have not set up and 50 day MA, 100 day MA, or 200 MA yet. The candlestick guys say a 50 day MA has crossed under the 200 day MA and made a Death Cross pattern.

The charts I am looking at show a DJI gap at 23500. Gap theory says that gap needs to be filled.

Screen Shot 2020-03-26 at 7.36.32 PM (resized).png

Extending the chart a bit looks to suggest the same 23500 and possibly up to 24000 DJI.

Screen Shot 2020-03-26 at 7.36.53 PM (resized).png

Putting on a 5 year chart shows the the 2019 Fed interest rate raise and its corresponding drop to 22500. That looks like resistance at the dotted green line.

Screen Shot 2020-03-26 at 7.37.32 PM (resized).png

Would I like to be moving in on some of this action? Sure. But I have been away too long to start swinging for the fences. I'll wait until I have a better feel for things.

Lol. I've kind of looked at the situation here, and the markets kind of went up because Trump has implied that we'll be back to business in '2 to 3 weeks'. I think A LOT of people believe that. The problem is, there isn't one piece of factual evidence that would back that up, just like in February when we had 15 cases and he said 'we have 15 cases, and soon it will be down to 0 here soon'. You now have other leaders saying that we should just back to work and open up things again in a couple weeks...I don't see how that's going to work either. We're going to have 400,000 cases minimum by mid April...we're just going to open it back up then?

I just don't think people are doing the math. Lots of people/businesses say we're going to be back open soon...I'm like how? Nobody wants to go out right now with 80,000 cases, how about 400,000?

It's not an ignorable problem. We're just making the problem even worse. What I don't know though is how the market will react to it. I really can't believe that it went up that much this week despite all the issues. Company earnings have to be pretty awful for almost every sector other than grocery and some tech, it makes the market look overvalued if this drags on through April, May, and June. But what do I know?

No one cares about the number of cases, only the number of deaths, which is still under the flu!! So...

/s

That probably is true especially when they say 80% has mild or no symptoms. If the death rate increases drastically then folks will pay attention.

I still cant believe how many people are out and about here in Michigan. I thought it would be a ghost town when I went to get milk.

I do think the stock market will drop tomorrow for various reasons including the increased cases

So let's just review our chances for an Easter recovery.

We just exceeded China on the number of infected people. But we haven't come anywhere near close to China's (or Singapore's, or Germany's, or Italy's) response to the pandemic. We have consistently failed to act, taken half measures, and not done what needed to be done, even though the writing has been on the wall since January.

I mean look at the pathetic lack of response. People can still fly in and out of NYC, the most infected zone in the USA. Many officials continue to do nothing or worse. NYC's infections are doubling every 4 days.

It's not "if" the death rate increases dramatically. It /will/ increase dramatically. Simple math.

The problem with dear leader saying a hopeful date like "Easter" is that you get a nice little bounce now, but when Easter rolls around, and all the dead people are piled up, that's not going to spark enthusiasm to invest.

I don't know when the next drop will be, but I strongly believe there will be another drop. Q1 earnings are going to be devastating. The next unemployment figures are going to be devastating.

This is a dead cat bounce. It's FOMO + day trading.

I went all cash a while ago, and I'm staying all cash for the foreseeable future.

From Barron’s -

Investors are looking ahead to Friday, when Congress is expected to vote on a $2 trillion economic relief bill. Much of the market’s rally this week has been attributed to the bill’s progress. The bill is expected to pass, though bipartisan hopes to do so as quickly as possible could be slowed down by a rogue lawmaker, according to The Washington Post.

The Dow rose 6.4%, while the S&P 500 index was up 6.2% on Thursday. The Dow, up 17.6% this week, is on pace for its best week since August 1932. S&P 500, up 14%, is on track for its best week since October 1974.

“You could almost smell the burning shorts on Wall Street today, but as credit spreads remain wide, one has to wonder how much ‘real’ buying is behind this week moves, besides the bailout-induced short-covering,” Gorilla Trades strategist Ken Berman wrote, referring to investors that sell borrowed shares to bet on a stock’s price decline.

It hasn’t been all good news. The Department of Labor said 3.28 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, Berman noted, which was well above expectations. Meanwhile, the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), closed at 61, which according to Berman suggests a high amount of investor hedging. He added that Thursday’s levels were still much higher than the VIX’s peak during 2018’s sell-off.

“The ‘fear gauge’ is still well above its 200-day moving average and its surging 50-day moving average, and although volatility likely hit its cycle-high last week, the calm bull market days aren’t coming back to Wall Street anytime soon,” he wrote.

Write to Connor Smith at [email protected]

It's starting to become more accepted that the number of "infected" is much larger than previously thought (i.e. NBA testing as a statical example), but that the vast majority never even know. Where are the infected children?

If it is a mortality rate of .05%, things will pick up very quick.

You know, I've heard a couple other people throw out stuff like that. It's horse****. While the number of infected is clearly significantly higher than the number tested positive in the US, there's almost no possible way it's anywhere close to .05%. The cruise ship had 8 people die on it out of 700...everyone was tested on that ship. If it was .05%, not even 1 person should have died. And then you have that retirement home in Washington where a ton of residents passed away and I think there was only 80 of them.

Two clear examples where everyone was tested and the mortality rate was above 1%.

If the mortality rate was really that low, why would it be flooding the New York hospitals now?

South Korea tested the crap out of everyone. They're around .6% mortality rate. I think that is probably about where it's at on a normal population, the cruise ship was older but not nearly as old as you might think. BUT....that's only if the hospitals don't get overran. If they get overran like Italy, it seems like it jumps to 3 or 4 percent. 48% of the people on the cruise ship showed no symptoms, that should give you a good idea of how many people actually have it (probably at least 2 to 3 times what we're reporting currently, maybe more).

Also, the mortality rate for 0 to 20 is almost nothing. So what does that mean? Well if your mortality rate is .6%, and 1/4 of your population is 0%, that means for adults it's actually like .8%.

Sorry for the rant.

The Senior Center in WA only substantiates the lower mortality rate, they were dying already and just happened to have C19. You're right on the Cruise Ship, that is a little more suspect because of the lower sample size. For NY, it must mean that a majority of the City is infected already. We won't know for a bit, but it could be that the mortality rate is much lower, and that is due to the large number of people who are infected, but hasn't been recorded yet because the lack or targeting of testing. We just don't know yet.

There are areas in this article you can agree or disagree with. Down at the bottom he gives you a good idea of where his money is going. He is a billionaire and I am not. It is worth reading.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/26/investing/bill-ackman-coronavirus/index.html

Bill Ackman: Shut down the economy for a month

What? That doesn't make any sense. So you're saying that because 19 of the 120 people who lived there died, the mortality rate is actually lower? So somehow, these people survived the .05% death rate flu all these years, suddenly all at once died to a .05% coronavirus? You'll have to explain your logic here, not sure I follow.

Makes sense to me -
Ackman, however, is hopeful. He said he and his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, have been buying up stocks -- about $2.5 billion worth -- in the past week, as values have plummeted in a sharp sell-off.
"We bought a large hedge that became much more valuable when markets declined," Ackman said. "And over the last 10 days or so, we've been aggressively buying stocks that have been marked down. So we've been, you know, betting that the economy is going to recover and that great companies like a Starbucks ... and other consumer type franchises that we've specialized in are going to are going to recover from here."

And old advice from Buffet -
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/1083451/warren-buffetts-rules-for-investing-in-a-crisis

"We bought a large hedge that became much more valuable when markets declined,"

"And over the last 10 days or so, we've been aggressively buying stocks that have been marked down."

Anyone want to decode this for me? Does this mean that he was short going into the decline and has now turned to being long stocks?

Here’s some insight on the Ackman story which illustrates his motives - https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bill-ackman-hedge-profits-billions-coronavirus-tanks-stock-market-economy-2020-3-1029035562

Ackman is the worst kind of POS. Fearmongering to cause market panic, which his statements did, because he had substantial shorts on. I hope he got squeezed in the last 3 days as the markets rallied on the stimulus package.

Notwithstanding Ackman’s douche tactics I do think we are in for some big drops this week as the massive unemployment numbers and exponential growth of deaths will overshadow the stimulus package and the market will correct for this falsely inflated surge.

Correct. 27 million to 2plus billion "more valuable"

He was unwinding his short position as he was giving his "hell is coming" call and he began buying long positions.

He started calling for a shutdown in blog post etc before he made his short position supposedly.

But the fact is he made a pretty hyperbolic call on TV that he stood to profit from both on the short side and on the repurchase of long positions.

Maybe he is truly concerned, but I am too cynical to think he didn't act at least in part out of his very vested interest.

question for those much more knowledgeable.

I think this short surge is going to turn WAY WAY WAY down. My opinion and based on nothing other than my own thoughts on Covid as a whole (i.e. not market stuff) is that we are far from the bottom.

I have always been a max out the 401k as much as possible and let it ride sort of guy.
I have Fidelity and as of last week my 401k was -25%, but the bounce back up this week has me at like only -14% on the year.

Fidelity has a limited number of options (few index, large, mixed, small, international, and 2 bond options)
I have always had a little mix, slightly heavy on stocks but gradually putting more in a bond option over time.
I hope/planned to semi-retire in ~10 years so that gives you an idea of timeline. I expect that in the next 10 years we will see new highs in the market also, so I think plenty of time for me personally.

My question is...
Do I go move everything to Bonds 100% today to save myself on the continual fall? Then redistribute back to my previously successful mix after it bottoms out in 6-12 months?
OR
Do I just continue to "set it and forget it" given that I have 10 years left?

follow up question >> reading the fine print of a rebalance w Fidelity it says all stock re distributions have the option of waiting 7 days before they allow the rebalance. If I was making this change I would want it done today (I think Monday we see the real cliff and drop start as more major cities get blasted in #s over the weekend) Is this normal? or just shitty fidelity BS?

The Securities and Exchange Commission suspended trading of Zoom Technologies on Thursday, partly because investors are confusing it with Zoom Video, which has seen a surge share price due to COVID-19. It will resume trading April 9. ... The company has not disclosed financial information since 2015, the SEC says.20 hours ago

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/sec-pauses-zoom-technologies-as-traders-confuse-it-with-zoom-video.html

Thought this might be useful info for a few...

fidelity 401ks sometimes have a feature enabled called 'brokeragelink' that lets you open an open market account linked to your 401k.. my last two jobs had the feature but current job doesn't have it enabled. that gives you more options... that happen immediately (ETFs, stocks etc). 401ks are otherwise not designed for market timing. i think when I've used rebalance stuff.. i dont ever remember it taking 7 days though, that seems way slow.

You may (or may not ) be confusing Auto Rebalancing with rebalancing. If you Rebalance it should take place at the close of market (provided you put it in before market close. If you have "Auto Rebalancing" set up to automatically rebalance your account every quarter or every year then that may be what the "delay' language is for.

For example, some people want their account to maintain a 50% stock, 50% cash balance. They don't want to have to constantly adjust the account so it doesn't become out of whack so they set up an auto rebalance so the system automatically makes the trades based on their specified time period. This is what that language may be referring to.

man.. looks like the mistaken one was up more than the real one (at a point). thankful to the articles i read about people mistaking the two zooms prior to making purchases last week.. i got the right one

I think I’ll sell half this morning and the rest in the afternoon. I’m betting we end down as well. Then I’ll probably sit and watch for a couple days to decide what to jump into next.

So apparently it just came out on the twitter stream that Boeing isn't going to use federal bailout money. I am guessing they must not have got what they wanted and are now trying to hardball tank the system so they can lay blame. #tantrum

note I have not verified this info - it's circulating my stock channels.

thanks

I am talking about a full rebalance where I move all my current stuff around (dump the index, small, mid, etc... and put it 100% in the bond)

I would leave my purchase for all future stuff the same to they catch some of the upswing.

My thought is I would be doing 2 rebalances. First is now, to decrease losses (the bond option is like -3% on the year compared to -25% for most other things). Second would be after I feel market has fully bottomed, to rebalance to a nice mix again and try to maximize the climb back.

I am very much a set it and forget it. I did the research and basically do a slight rebalance each year or 6 months to move more conservative with funds (as I get closer to predicted retirement).

Thinking that a rebalance today could easily save me from another 30+% losses (what I expect the overall market to do in the next 6 months), but pretty nervous about that since it is not my area of knowledge.

My primary investments are reall rental property, which is more scary in the short term (tenants paying???) but my bread and butter in the longer term.

THIS IS NOT THE FLU

Unlike the flu, which has built in immunity and a vaccine, no one has immunity to covid19. Everyone gets it. And it’s more contagious than the flu. So it has the capability to overrun our hospitals as everyone gets sick at once. Not counted in the “death toll” is the amount of people who die from other medical issues like accidents, heart attacks, etc because the hospitals are full and overwhelmed or all the doctors are sick.

This is a real problem. In NYC hospitals are going to need refrigerated semi trucks for all the bodies. That’s sobering and sad and shouldn’t happen in America.

I mean with TARP banks were forced to take it so the stigma was removed. But even having the money and not using it might be enough. People will lend to Boeing if they know they have a lifeline. Otherwise capital markets would shut them out.

Go do some reading on the boglehead forums. These guys will keep you on your long term strategy and talk you out of making mistakes you'll regret.

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=5af8a85261a4634f406add48667b2161

I think you missed my point and the /s

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_philosophy

Hadn't thought of that, just seemed like after the demands they had, they were trying to play hardball.

So you're suggesting that Fidelity can take as long as 7 days to process a trade order? I've worked with hundreds of 401k Plans and, unless I'm dealing with some privately held stock I've never heard of that. Your best bet is to call their Call Center and ask specifically about how long it takes to place a trade.

Here we go...

U.S. not bailing out airlines, Boeing not using federal money: Treasury Secretary

https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/us-not-bailing-out-airlines-boeing-not-using-federal-money-treasury-secretary-2123498

Maybe they'll have a separate bill? This doesn't make sense to me...

Ed, I had emergency surgery for a burst appendix in Spring 2018. The hospital was well staffed, efficient and clean. Saved my life, tbh.

I can't imagine what my experience would have been like if it happened today...

There are going to be a lot of deaths having very little to do with the virus.

None of this is a "bailout", you see. Just temporary liquidity. Look over there!
https://www.businessinsider.com/airlines-coronavirus-bailout-senate-stock-buybacks-2020-3

Boeing isn't mentioned in the bill but
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/us/politics/virus-fineprint-stimulus-bill.html
"The deal specifically sets aside $17 billion for “businesses critical to maintaining national security” — a category seen as intended at least partly for Boeing, the troubled aircraft manufacturer and Pentagon contractor, whose name appears nowhere in the bill." So they'll bail them out for national defense reasons.

The treasury secretary knows this is massively unpopular. Which is why there's spin on it. Boeing and the airlines are getting bailed out. Saying they won't spend the money is just a way to sugarcoat it.

Down we go! Let's have some fun with this. With all the wild swings this week, where will we actually wind up % wise gain or loss for the week? Remember, we started off the week 8% and change down before running up 18% or so. I say we wind up about 2-3% up for the week.

I had a discussion with my financial advisor last week and she advised me not to move anything. However, I have longer to go for retirement than you do.

She told me that I should be changing my future allocations, but there was no reason to move anything right now.

Here are the take aways from our conversation. Keep in mind, I'm almost 100% in stocks and aggressive risk, so this was based on my portfolio.

1. Emerging market funds will mostly likely have the worst downside and could be in a recession longer than the United States
2. Wait for a 10% bump in the S&P at increase exposure in the following funds by moving future allocation from small cap funds into the following funds:
-AllianzGI
-Alger Cap Appreciation Fund
-T. Rowe Price Growth Fund
3. Energy shares are unsafe and they expect them to bottom out by the end of the 2nd quarter.
4. Energy and Industrial materials could drop by another 30% due to supply chain issues and dividend cuts
5. The expectation is that this economic recession (not market) will be sharp and short. Lows are expected around the end of the 2nd-beginning of the 3rd quarter with recover by the 4th quarter.

Not sure if that helps, but that's what I have in my notes.

Either way, my suggestion would be not to take the suggestion of someone on the Internet that can't look at your portfolio and suggest a course of action to help you in reaching your goals.

thx

Anyone like a VXX $50/$60 call spread? What time frame would you prefer? Personally I think the market will continue down until the US cases start to improve. We have family in Iowa and it is business as usual there. Everyone is still going to work at their offices and you wouldn't know there was a pandemic going on. I think the other States will be harder hit in the next couple months.

Funny, just saw your message. Sold some RBC calls yesterday. Likely wait a while further to close them out.

I haven't been over there in years, but just did a quick walk though.

Wow.

Their C19 thread makes ours look like a playground.

https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=305217&start=3850